


Stop Go

by laulan



Series: 30-300 [27]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Depression, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-25 01:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laulan/pseuds/laulan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don’t feel like talking,” he manages, finally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stop Go

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a project where I wrote one 300-word ficlet for each day in September. Content warning for depression.

Natasha’s the one who finds him.

She doesn’t say anything, just sits down. He hunches his shoulders up and keeps quiet, but the silence gets to him after a while.

“Is everybody looking for me?”

She shrugs, not taking her eyes off the skyline. “Pretty much. Don’t want to start the party without you.”

“Oh,” he says. Somehow it’s worse, knowing. He was sort of pretending that he’d stepped into another world up here on the roof, one of Thor’s or something, where no one would miss him. He bites his lip. He knows he should say, _Guess we should get down there,_ but he can’t. There’s a lump in his throat the size of New York, and the thought of laughing and smiling makes his stomach turn. He’s not in the mood. He’s been remembering too much.

“I don’t feel like talking,” he manages, finally. The words feel dragged up, like boots coming unstuck from mud in the battlefield. He coughs to cover the feeling, surprised to find his eyes are wet.

“So don’t talk,” she says.

It’s not pitying: it’s matter-of-fact. She meets his eyes. “You don’t have to come down. I’ll tell them you can’t make it. They’ll survive.”

He lets out a noise, not really a laugh. “I’m not used to this,” he says. “Before, I always just—I kept going, I did what I had to. I _always_ made it, even when I didn’t want to. Now—I feel like I can’t do that anymore. And I don’t know why. I keep _thinking_ too much about things.”

“I know that feeling,” she says. He glances over, and sees that she does, shadow-faced like he is.

Somehow it makes him feel better than anything else has—knowing he’s not the only one.

“Thanks,” he says, quiet.


End file.
